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LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES
Go with the flow like a dead fish.
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
A different kind of machine politics.
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.
THE HOME FRONT
Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.
TUCKER EVERLASTING
Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.
The Puppet Masters - Compulsion, complicity, and the art of Bunraku.
The National Bunraku Theatre, in New York recently for the first time in more than thirty years, presented an evening of suicides. The performance, at the Japan Society, consisted of excerpts from two of the company’s most celebrated productions. In the Fire Watchtower scene from “The Greengrocer’s Daughter,” by Suga Sensuke and Matsuda Wakichi, from 1773, the titular character sacrifices herself to save a temple page boy she loves. In a scene from “The Love Suicides at Sonezaki,” by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, from 1703, two lovers are driven to take their own lives. Both plays were inspired by real events, and Chikamatsu’s was followed by a wave of double suicides that led to a ban on further performances. This mirroring of life and art is all the more astonishing given the fact that the actors are not people but puppets.
The Convert - The sudden rise of J. D. Vance has transfixed conservative élites. Is he the future of Trumpism?
Vance’s selection as Trump’s running mate had punctuated an astounding rise. Born in the small manufacturing city of Middletown, Ohio, he was raised by a drug-addicted mother and his beloved Appalachian-born grandmother, Mamaw. He worked his way up through storied American institutions: the Marine Corps, Yale Law School, Silicon Valley. “Hillbilly Elegy,” the best-selling memoir Vance published in 2016, made him famous, and his denunciations of Trump as “cultural heroin” for the white working class even more so. A few years later, he was a senator from Ohio, the Republican Party’s most effective spokesman for Trumpism as an ideology, and—both improbably and inevitably—the VicePresidential nominee. “If you think about where he came from and where he is, at forty years old,” the conservative analyst Yuval Levin, a Vance ally, said, “J.D. is the single most successful member of his generation in American politics.”
SONGS OF WAR
Early on in “Blitz,” Rita Hanway (Saoirse Ronan), a London factory worker, puts her nine-year-old son, George (Elliott Heffernan), aboard a train. Rather, George puts himself aboard; he twists angrily free of his mother’s grasp—“I hate you!” he cries—and tears off down the platform.
STAR-CROSSED
“Sunset Blud.” and Romeo Juliet,” on Broadway.
A PIECE OF HER MIND
Does the Enlightenment’s great female intellect need rescuing?
EACH MORTAL THING
What other creatures understand about death.
From the Wilderness
One morning in the rainy season, I went to bed at 6 a.m. after working all night and was on the verge of falling asleep when I was startled by the sound of my father’s voice coming through the air-conditioner next to my bed.
THE BIG DEAL
Joe Biden's economic policies are starting to transform America. Will anyone notice?
THE LAST MILE
The aid workers who risk their lives to bring relief to Gaza.
TAKE ME HOME
The filmmaker Mati Diop turns her gaze on plundered art.
AMERICAN REFRAINS
“Hold On to Me Darling,” Our Town,” and Sump’n Like Wings.”
GIG ECONOMY
The decline of the working musician.
CITY OF GOD
The Met’ revelatory show on Siena.
POP CULTURE
How dirty soda became a Utah delicacy.
CLOSED CHAMBERS
What can memoirs by Supreme Court Justices teach us?
BUCKS WITHOUT BORDERS
In the geography of the rich and mobile, sovereignty is for sale.
WAR DOGS
The facility lies two miles away from the main terminals but within the grounds of the airport, at the end of a service road that skirts a pond where geese flock during their migrations.
PURCHASING POWER
What do the biggest donors to Donald Trump's campaign expect to get in return?
PIVOTAL, SEMINAL, RARE
He built an empire in high-end books. Then a rock star pressed charges.
FOREIGN INFLUENCERS
How the U.S.government decides when to alert the public about election meddling.
PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCE
Hi, Billy's dad! Andrew, right? Thanks for meeting on such short notice. No, don't worry, this actually isn't about Billy.